The Highlander (18 page)

“Did ye see what happened?” he panted.

She stared at him with wide, moist eyes for a beat longer than she should have before they darted away and she shook her head. “It was all so fast.”

A panicked ruckus from the square told him that the barrel had rolled right out of the open doors and into the yard. It would pick up momentum down the yard, heading straight for …

Andrew.

Liam leaped away from Mena and bolted after it, dashing into the square and chasing it toward the open barrel fires.
Nay,
if it reached the flames with as much alcohol as was inside the barrel, the consequences would be as explosive as a barrel full of gunpowder.

Bellowing his son's name, Liam lunged for the runaway barrel, ready to throw himself beneath it if need be to ensure his son's survival. Others reached it at the same time, and between them they were able to grapple it into stillness inches away from the open-framed building where the fires burned.

Frantically searching the distillery yard, Liam called for Andrew, the need to cast eyes on his son first and foremost in his mind.

“Where is he?” he demanded of Thomas Campbell.

“I doona ken where he went, Laird.” Thomas stumbled out of the forge on unsteady legs, obviously shaken by how close he'd come to death. “He disappeared right after ye did.”

A sick fear lodged in his gut as Liam turned and rushed back toward the warehouse. Mena flattened herself against the door to get out of his way as he stalked past her to check the shadows and corners below the place where the barrel had landed.

No Andrew. He was safe. But as Liam inspected the shelf from where the whisky had fallen, one thing became staggeringly clear. The barrel had been pushed by someone. And if Liam hadn't stepped toward Mena when he did …

It would have crushed him.

 

C
HAPTER
N
INE

“Andrew?” Mena pushed open the door to Andrew's bedroom only to find him bent over in the corner scrubbing the stones with a bucket and brush. “Whatever are you doing?”

“Miss Lockhart.” He scrambled to his feet and scowled at her. “What are
ye
doing in my room? Is my father with ye?”

Mena read something beneath the aversion in his voice. Anxiety, maybe, or guilt, as though she'd caught him doing something wrong. The farther she ventured into his chamber, the more concerned she became. It was done entirely in red and black, but for the goose down fluffs that now covered the floor and almost every other surface of the otherwise tidy room. They rolled across the stones and carpets in the slightest breeze caused by her skirts. The disemboweled corpses of his pillows lay strewn at the foot of his bed, and one or two hung limply by the wardrobe.

“There was an …
incident
at the distillery. Your father is dealing with it now,” she explained. She didn't feel comfortable calling it an accident. Because she'd become certain that it wasn't. She'd seen more than she'd let on. A figure in the darkness.

The
Brollachan
?

“Andrew. Tell me what happened here. Did you … did you do this?” Motioning to the chaos, she bent to pick up a shoe that appeared to have been torn apart. Just what was going on in this ancient keep?

“Aye. It was me.” He hadn't moved from whatever he protected on the floor in the corner, though he regarded her with the frozen, unsure expression of a culpable party in a crime.

Heart squeezing with concern, Mena stopped at his writing desk, where charcoal renderings of dark shadows and red eyes stared up at her with spine-chilling familiarity. That shadow. She'd seen it before the ledge supporting the Scotch barrel had given way and nearly crushed Ravencroft. How terrible it was, to not trust your own eyes. Had Andrew seen the demon as well? Did he have something to do with this?

“Andrew, do you mind explaining to me—”

A commotion interrupted her. It came from the wardrobe, the heavy wood doors trembling as something pressed against them, struggling to be released. Was all this some kind of elaborate prank? Or something entirely more sinister?

“Miss Lockhart, doona open—”

Ready to be done with this mystery once and for all, Mena hurried for the wardrobe and flung the doors open. She gave a startled cry as a familiar form lunged for her.

And began to enthusiastically lick her face.

Utterly relieved, she stroked and cuddled the wriggling puppy in her arms as everything suddenly began to make sense. “So lovely to see you again, darling!” She laughed, enjoying the silky black and brown fur against her cheek, much as she had the day she'd pulled the poor thing off the rocks. “You wicked thing,” she scolded. “Look at that face, not one bit of guilt over the absolute chaos you've wrought.” Tucking the cheerful puppy into her bosom, she turned. “You never told me that—”

The tears streaming down Andrew's crumpled face astonished her into stillness.

“Everything's a disaster,” he sobbed, the scrub brush clattering to the floor. “It's all ruined. He'll take Rune from me. The only thing I love. The only one that loves me back. And then he'll leave again, and ye'll go, too, because I've been beastly to ye. Rhianna will be off getting a husband. I'll be alone!”

Recovering from her initial speechless incredulity, Mena rushed to Andrew and wrapped her arm around his shoulder, handing him little Rune, who instantly went to work on lapping up his tears.

“I don't see why your father should take her,” she cajoled. “What's a few ruined pillows? We can clean up the mess in no time. Don't worry if she wee'd on the stones, at least it wasn't the carpets. I can't even smell it.”

“You doona understand!” he wailed, his newly deepening voice cracking with emotion. “He will take her from me. He told me nay when I asked if I could have her. But I told Uncle Thorne that Father said I could.”

“I see.” Troubled, Mena led Andrew to the bed, clearing away some unruly down feathers so they could sit, though she kept her arm around his slim shoulders. He collapsed against her side, his cheek buried into her shoulder, as he cried and clutched the squirming pup.

Fighting against a quiver in her own chin, Mena stroked his thick dark hair, so much like his father's. “Darling, first of all, let me promise you that I'm going nowhere, and neither is your father. He retired his commission to stay here with you because he loves you. Very much. You should have seen him today when a barrel fell and he thought you were in danger. He couldn't find you and he was so worried. Frantic.”

“Worried my work wouldna get done.” The bitterness in his tone was at once too adult for one so young, and yet completely adolescent.

“That's not fair,” Mena said gently. “The things he is trying to impart to you are so important. In fact, your father and I might be teaching you very different things, but it's all for an identical reason. Do you know what that is?”

Andrew shook his head, though he didn't lift his eyes from where he stroked Rune, who kept trying to gnaw on his hand.

“Because the more information you have, the better,
easier,
your life will be. I don't know if you know this, but things are changing out there in the world, Andrew. Engines and steam power and factories are making the world a much smaller place. Land isn't the most precious commodity anymore, and the life of the idle lord, living off his tenants and properties, is going to be obsolete before too long. Your father is trying to secure you a legacy,
a living,
and teach you to do the same for the generations that come after you. That means learning how to work hard to keep it. He wouldn't do that if he didn't love you a great deal.” Mena imagined it surprised her more than poor Andrew that she defended the marquess.

Fresh tears leaked from Andrew's eyes, and he sat up from her shoulder. “Doona tell him about Rune,” he begged.

“I really don't feel comfortable lying to your father.” It was hard enough keeping her own secrets from the laird. “He's going to find out eventually,” she pointed out.

“She's been here for two weeks already and he hasna found her,” he argued desperately. “I take her out back at night, and while he's in the fields. But I couldna while I was down at the distillery. She only went on the floor the once. Well, there was today, but it was just wet. And it was on the stones, so it isna hard to clean. He said that I need to learn to take care of something other than myself. And so I am.” The earnest love in his eyes for the little creature in his arms broke Mena's heart. She was glad he had the pet, that he could show it love and veneration. She'd begun to worry that his darkness was more than just sullen. That it was, indeed, the beginnings of a cruel man. That he could have such tender feelings for the small animal gave her hope.

“It's not as though you can hide poor Rune in this room for the entirety of her life,” she said, taking a different approach. “She'll go mad. She needs to romp about outdoors.”

Andrew's shoulders sagged, but she could see the moment he accepted the truth of her words. “I'll tell him,” he consented. “But give me a few days. Until he isna angry about today anymore. He told me not to leave, but I had to check on her.”

Mena considered it. What if the laird discovered their secret before then? What if she was dismissed?

Andrew took her hand. “Please, Miss Lockhart. I'll do anything. I'll rework my figures, read any book you want, even the ridiculously boring ones.”

“What is it about classic literature that you find so boring?” she queried defensively.

“Everything.”
He sniffed, his despair replaced by disgust. “I read penny dreadfuls because they have intrigue and monsters and murder. All of the things that thrill and inspire. We read about love and melancholy and it's so dull.”

“Indeed?” Mena asked, an idea beginning to stir. “What if I told you that I would keep your secret for three days, if you read three separate works that I specifically pick out for you?”

“I'll do it.” Andrew sighed and looked down at Rune, who'd just wiped a streak of drool on his trousers. “Which ones?” he asked skeptically.

“What if I said that in one of them, a woman is violently raped by two men, and they cut off her hands and her tongue to keep their secret? Then her father kills them and bakes them into a pie which he feeds to his enemy? Would you find that interesting?”

“Aye.” Andrew nodded vehemently, his eyes round with shock.

“Well, that's Shakespeare for you.”

“Nay!” he said in disbelief.

“Titus Andronicus.”
Mena nodded, feeling a thrill at having enraptured the attention of one previously so morose. “Or what about a novel that accounts a man who was betrayed by an evil villain and is wrongly imprisoned for being a Bonapartist. This man escapes from prison and exacts terrible and sometimes violent revenge on all those who wronged him.”

“I'll read that one.” Andrew nodded.

“Yes, you will.” Mena smiled victoriously. “But you can only read
The Count of Monte Cristo
in French.”

His face fell into a droll sort of acceptance. “All right, Miss Lockhart, ye win, I'll learn my French.”

“Excellent!” Mena stood and beamed at him. “Thank you for being a darling, and I promise that you can trust me with your secret … for
three
days, Andrew. That is all I dare give you.”

Andrew nodded solemnly. “Three days.”

Looking around the messy room, she brushed an errant puff of goose down from her skirts. “Well, let's tidy up in here, shall we? Before one of the staff discovers our intrigue.”

“Aye.” Andrew set the puppy on the floor, and Rune chased a ball of fluff under the bed. “Ye know, Miss Lockhart,” he mumbled as he turned back to his bucket and retrieved the scrub brush. “I'm glad ye're here.”

“Thank you, Andrew,” she said, turning to hide eyes grown misty. “I am, too. Very glad, indeed.”

*   *   *

Liam had never been the kind of man to kneel, even in a church. The old oak pew groaned beneath his weight as he sat, and he glanced around Ravencroft's chapel to ensure his solitude. Centuries had tarnished the ornate candelabra on the decorated altar, and the late afternoon light filtered through the stained glass that surrounded it on three sides. The window depicting a compassionate and loving Redeemer, resplendent in red robes, glowed in the middle of adjacent renderings of Saint George, the patron saint of warriors, and Saint Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland.

He would not be welcomed into their exalted presence, Liam knew that. His very existence was an affront to the man they called the Prince of Peace. But something in his restless soul had drawn him to this silent, hallowed place. Guilt, maybe. A sense of contrition tinged with emptiness. When one was haunted by the ghosts of the past, or faced with a horrible possibility, where did one turn to find clarity?

He could think of nowhere else.

It was no ghost who'd tried to kill him today. But a man. Someone strong enough to push that barrel from its nest.

It had been his personal consideration of all the people who might want him dead that had driven him to this place, beneath which several generations of Mackenzie lairds were entombed.

His brother Thorne, who still saw their father when he looked at Liam. Who blamed him for so much, including Colleen's death.

The ever-present Jani, who'd truly glimpsed the Demon Highlander more than any other person on this earth. The gentle boy had scrubbed the blood of his own countrymen off Liam's uniform more times than he could count. Had he been biding his time, waiting until Liam felt not only safe, but affectionate toward the boy, to take the revenge he rightfully deserved?

Then … there was his own child. His heir. Though Andrew was of smaller stature than him, he teetered on the cusp of manhood. He was sturdy … but was he strong enough? Maybe his hatred had lent him the might he'd needed to push that barrel. Maybe he wouldn't wait until he could look Liam in the eye to challenge him, but would use his cunning and intellect, instead of brute strength and physical prowess.